NEWS

Unbiased headline news for Monday April 15, 2024 – The Israeli Defense Force has eased homefront command guidelines after closing schools and limiting gatherings ahead of Iran’s missile strike Saturday. “It was decided to restore educational activities across Israel,” the IDF said in a statement early Monday, local time. The changes went into effect at midnight, according to Israel’s Home Front Command. Communities near the northern border and the Gaza Strip can also resume educational activities “in subject with restrictions.” — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that during a Sunday call between President Joe Biden and congressional leaders there was “consensus” that Congress needs to act quickly to send aid to both Israel and Ukraine. Schumer said at a news conference in New York that “hopefully” something can be accomplished this coming week to aid both countries. Earlier Sunday, Biden spoke to Senate Majority Leader Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. — In the aftermath of the unprecedented airstrikes by Iran against Israel, President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. will not participate in a reprisal strike on Iran. Mr. Biden, who spoke with Netanyahu on Saturday, condemned the Iranian assault while making clear that the U.S. had “helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles,” according to a White House House statement. Mr. Biden said he reaffirmed to Netanyahu the U.S.’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s security. — Four people are dead after the vehicle they were traveling in was struck by a train in rural Idaho Saturday, authorities said. Idaho State Police said the pickup was carrying a 38-year-old man, 36-year-old woman and two children, who were all from Nampa. The vehicle was traveling on a private road that intersected a railroad crossing, but the driver failed to yield and the pickup was struck by a train, state police said. — One child was killed, and ten other people, including three other children, were injured in a shooting in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood Saturday evening, police said. The shooting happened around 9:20 p.m. near West 52nd Street and South Damen Avenue, Chicago police said. The victims were at a family gathering when the shooting happened. Officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert of 18 rounds fired and found multiple people shot on the block, police said. — Four people were arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping over the weekend in connection with the disappearances of two Oklahoma women. Veronica Butler, 27; and Jilian Kelley, 39, of Hugoton, Kansas, went to pick up Butler’s children for a birthday party in Kansas but never showed up. On Saturday, Oklahoma authorities said they arrested and charged four people. They were charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. — Authorities are searching for a missing crew member who went overboard Friday from a Holland America cruise ship. Deputies with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Port Everglades District responded around 11:18 a.m. Saturday to a report of a missing crew member on the Rotterdam cruise ship. The ship was sailing eastward along the Florida Keys at the tail end of a six-night Caribbean cruise when the incident happened. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed two controversial bills that he says will buffer law enforcement from “anti-police activists.” SB 184 sets a 25-foot “no-go” zone around police and first responders who are “engaged in the lawful performance of a legal duty.” People in violation of the rule will receive a verbal warning. Failure to comply will result in a second-degree misdemeanor.

U.S. officials confirmed Israel’s announcement that Iran’s retaliatory strike has begun. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier said that it launched extensive missile and drone operations against targets in Israel, according to Tasnim, the Iranian news-agency affiliated with the branch of Iran’s armed forces.

Unbiased headline news for Saturday April 13, 2024 – Ukraine’s military chief warned that the battlefield situation in the industrial east has “significantly worsened in recent days.” In an update on the Telegram messaging app, General Oleksandr Syrskyy said that Moscow had “significantly” ramped up its assaults since President Vladimir Putin extended his nearly quarter-century rule in a preordained election last month that saw anti-war candidates barred from the ballot. — A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. Eight people, including a 9-month-old, were injured in the attack. The 40-year-old suspect began stabbing people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city’s eastern suburbs, before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters. — Israel’s army said Saturday the body of a missing Israeli teen was found in the West Bank after he was killed in a “terrorist attack.” The disappearance of 14-year-old Binyamin Achimair sparked attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, one Palestinian was killed and 25 others were wounded in the attack on al-Mughayyir village, Palestinian health officials said. — The Democratic National Committee has been paying President Joe Biden’s legal fees incurred in connection with special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into his handling of classified documents. Since last year, the party committee has paid the law firm of Bob Bauer, the lead attorney representing Biden in Hur’s investigation more than $1 million, roughly $150,000 a month, from July 2023 through February 2024, the party committee’s most recent disclosures show. — A Texas mother has been arrested after allegedly leaving her two young children home alone for days to go on a cruise, court records show. Lakesha Williams, 29, of Houston, has been charged with abandoning a child with intent to return, a felony, according to a criminal complaint. Neighbors at her high-rise apartment building reportedly saw Williams leave with luggage on April 4 but “never saw her return,” according to the complaint. — One person was killed and more than a dozen injured after a man allegedly intentionally crashed a stolen semi-truck into a Texas Department of Public Safety office in Brenham on Friday, officials said. The suspect, identified by authorities as 42-year-old Clenard Parker had been informed by the office on Thursday that he was not eligible to renew his commercial driver’s license, Ruiz said. The suspect then “returned today with intent to harm,” Washington County Judge Mark Keough said in a statement on social media. — A Michigan man and his dog were rescued from the icy waters of an inland lake in the state’s Upper Peninsula, authorities said. Three first responders needed medical treatment. Thad Cooper, 56, of Michigamme Township, was searching for his dog Friday afternoon when he saw its head poking above the ice more than 100 yards from shore on Lake Michigamme, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office said. Cooper kayaked onto the lake to try to rescue the dog but fell in himself and could not get out, the office said. — Drug shortages have reached an all-time high in the United States, pharmacists are warning. During the first three months of 2024, there were 323 active medication shortages, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and Utah Drug Information Service. Previously, the record high was 320 shortages in 2014. This ASHP started tracking shortages in 2001.

For five years, a New Yorker named Mickey Barreto managed to live rent-free in the landmark New Yorker Hotel by exploiting a local housing law. However, prosecutors say Barreto went too far…

Unbiased headline news for Thursday April 11, 2024 – Consumer prices rose 3.5% in March compared to a year ago, accelerating markedly from the previous month and reversing some of the progress achieved in a two-year fight to cool inflation, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. Price increases have cooled dramatically from a peak of about 9%, but inflation still stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%. A spike in housing and gasoline prices at the outset of this year has helped prolong the nation’s bout of elevated inflation. The U.S., Japan and Australia will create a joint air defense network, President Biden announced alongside the Japanese prime minister. “Together, our countries are taking significant steps to strengthen defense security cooperation,” Mr. Biden said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the White House Rose Garden. “We’re modernizing command and control structures”, Biden stated. The third-longest river in Europe has burst from its banks joining others as floods have swept across parts of Russia and Kazakstan with more flooding on the way, according to multiple reports. Melting snow was the cause of the Ural River flooding which has so far forced more than 100,000 people to be evacuated as protests have sprung up against Russian authorities over the government’s response. The Arizona Republican lawmakers quickly shut down discussion on a proposed repeal of the state’s newly revived 1864 law that criminalizes abortion throughout pregnancy unless a woman’s life is at risk. House Democrats and at least one Republican tried to open discussion on a repeal of the 1864 abortion ban, which holds no exceptions for rape or incest. GOP leaders, who command the majority, cut it off twice and quickly adjourned for the week. Outraged Democrats erupted in finger-waving chants of “Shame! Shame!” Police in Birmingham Alabama are searching for the gunman who shot and killed a UPS worker in a targeted attack, authorities said. The shooting unfolded at about 6:05 PM Tuesday as UPS driver Anthony Lamar Love Jr. walked to his car at a Birmingham UPS facility after his shift ended, Birmingham police sergeant Laquitta Wade said. Love was confronted by a gunman who fired about 10 shots and then fled the scene, Wade said. One person was killed and five others injured, including two children, after gunmen opened fire in a residential area of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, police said. A suspect vehicle is being sought in connection with the shooting, police said. The incident occurred shortly after 6 p.m. eastern-time in the Carver Langston neighborhood in Northeast DC, on the 1100 block of 21st Street, police said. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a new rule mandating the first-ever national standard for the presence of so-called “forever chemicals” in drinking water. The new standard limits six types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in drinking water — a move the EPA says will protect abou 100 million people from exposure. PFAS are a ubiquitous group of chemicals found in a host of industrial and personal products, including fire extinguishing foam, food packaging, dental floss and others. Ford is recalling nearly 43,000 small SUVs because gasoline can leak from the fuel injectors onto hot engine surfaces, increasing the risk of fires. The recall covers certain Bronco Sport SUVs from the 2022 and 2023 model years, as well as Escape SUVs from 2022. All have 1.5-liter engines. Ford says in documents filed with U.S. safety regulators that fuel injectors can crack, and gasoline or vapor can accumulate near ignition sources, possibly touching off fires.

Unbiased headline news for Wednesday April 10, 2024 – The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a Boeing engineer’s allegations that assembly defects in the company’s Seven-Eighty-Seven Dreamliner raise safety concerns. Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, said “he observed shortcuts taken by Boeing” during the assembly of the plane, “resulting in drilling debris left in interfaces and deformation of composite material.” He also claims to have observed issues with the seven-seven-seven assembly process. — The State Department has greenlighted an emergency 138-million-dollars in foreign military sales for Ukraine to provide critical repairs and spare parts for Kyiv’s Hawk missile systems. The announcement follows a similar, small-sized round of $300 million in munitions support the Pentagon announced last month after it was able to convert contract savings to be able to offset the cost of providing the aid. Both the State and Defense Departments have been looking for ways to continue to get Ukraine support. — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel has not apprised the U.S. of any specific date for the start of a major offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Blinken spoke a day after Israeli Prime Minister NetinYahoo vowed that a date has been set to invade Rafah. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, says a ground operation into Rafah would be a mistake and has demanded to see a credible plan to protect civilians. — Germany firmly rejected accusations brought against it in the World Court that it has aided Israel in perpetrating genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. German Foreign Office Legal Director-General Tania von Uslar-Gleichen was the first to speak in Berlin’s defense during the second and final day of hearings in The Hague concerning charges brought against the European nation of violating international humanitarian law amid Israel’s war against Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza. — The sexual assault lawsuit against New York Mayor Eric Adams is “entirely fictitious” and should be dismissed, his defense attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a new court filing. Spiro is assisting the city’s Law Department in defending the mayor, who, as an NYPD captain at the time of the alleged conduct, is eligible for free legal representation from the city. — The driver of a semitrailer-truck rammed a police vehicle in southwestern Michigan, crashed it into a home, tried to flee and was fatally shot by an officer, officials said. St. Joseph Township officers responded to a request Monday evening to check on the welfare of the 42-year-old driver from Tennessee, who then drove his truck into a police vehicle, state police said in a social media post. — An Oklahoma judge ordered a Kansas City Chiefs superfan known as “ChiefsAholic” who admitted to a series of bank robberies to pay $10.8 million to a teller who was assaulted with a gun. A judge in Tulsa handed down the order last week against Xaviar Michael Bubudar, 29, who was known for attending Chiefs games dressed as a wolf. Former bank teller Payton Garcia alleged Bubudar used a gun to assault her during a robbery of a Bixby Oklahoma credit union in December 2022. — Two bills moving through the Hawaii legislature could phase out short-term rentals that are not occupied by their owner, as the state tries to tackle rising housing costs and homelessness. State House Bill 1838 and Senate Bill 2919 have prompted a fierce debate about the future of vacation rentals like Airbnb and Vrbo homes. Residents have long complained about the impact of tourism and luxury home and resort development on housing accessibility, as well as the lack of affordable housing and rentals for residents.